DataBaseball
2026
Spencer Kieboom headshot

C · 2018

Spencer Kieboom

Age
27
B/T
R/R
Height
6' 0"
Weight
210 lb
Born
March 16, 1991 in Mount Pleasant, SC, USA
MLB debut
October 2, 2016
dbWAR
.5
2 season(s)
PA
143
AVG
.232
OBP
.322
SLG
.320
wRC+
79
100 = avg

Spencer Kieboom is a catcher for the Washington Nationals. In 2018 he hit 2 home runs and knocked in 13 RBIs, notching 29 hits across 143 plate appearances in 48 games. His batting average was .232, 6.4% lower than the league average of .248. He reached base at a .322 clip and slugged .320, for an OPS of .642, 11.8% lower than the league mark of .728 — the second worst on his team, and 348th of 448 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 84.3 mph off the bat, hit 20.3% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 1.3% of them and made contact on 76.7% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 79 wRC+ puts his offence 21% below average. That comes to 0.5 dbWAR — -3.0 runs with the bat, -0.1 on the bases, +2.8 for the position he plays, against replacement level. It includes no fielding: defensive runs are proprietary and are not estimated here, so the figure credits playing a demanding position but not playing it well.

League context

Percentile among qualified batters, 2018.

wRC+79
wOBA.292
ISO.088
BB%11.2%
WAR.5

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2018. These four terms sum to +4.5 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR.

Batting-3.0Baserunning-0.1Position+2.8Replacement+4.8
BattingBaserunningPositionReplacement

WAR by season

0.50.20.01618

Batting

Standard and advanced, by season.

Trend
2018481432921301628.232.322.320.088.28111.2%19.6%.292-3.0790.5
2016110000101.000100.0%0.0%.697+0.33580.0

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2018. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
SplitPAABHHRBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBAK%
vs LHP363410125.294.333.412.32713.9%
vs RHP107911911423.209.318.286.28121.5%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2018.

Loading 86 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 79 tracked batted balls in 2018. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate
1.3%
1 barrels
Exit velocity
84.3
mph average
Max exit velo
105.1
mph, hardest hit
Hard hit
20.3%
95 mph or better
Sweet spot
38.0%
8–32° launch
Launch angle
7.7°
average
Barrel rate1.3%
Exit velocity84.3 mph
Hard hit rate20.3%
Contact rate76.7%

A barrel is a batted ball whose exit velocity and launch angle have historically produced at least a .500 average and 1.500 slugging — 98 mph within 26–30°, widening to 8–50° by 116 mph. Reconstructed from Statcast's published anchor points, which reproduces them exactly; the interior is within a degree. Sweet spot (8–32°) is an exact definition.

Hot and cold zones

Batting average by pitch location, 2018.

.111.0004 AB5 AB.0008 AB.26715 AB.33318 AB.22218 AB7 AB.25012 AB.31316 AB
Below averageLeague averageAbove average
Batting average by location of the pitch that ended each plate appearance, catcher's view. The bordered square is the strike zone; the outer band is chase territory. Cells with fewer than 8 at-bats are left grey rather than shown as signal. League average on the same attribution is .247.

Situational hitting

How Spencer Kieboom hits by base state, outs, score and late-game pressure — each read against his own season line.

Split by
By who is on base when he comes up. The season line is repeated as the baseline.
SituationPAABHHRRBIBBSOAVGOBPSLGwOBA
All situations143.232.322.320.292
Bases empty80711822816.254.338.380.321
Runner on first282640228.154.214.231.204
Runners on635411011812.204.302.241.256
RISP352870964.250.371.250.297

Runners on includes runners in scoring position, which is the convention every reference uses. Counted from play-by-play, 2018.

Head to head

Put Spencer Kieboom beside up to three others.

Compare — add up to 3 more players
Spencer Kieboom

Similar players

Nearest 2018 seasons by discipline, contact, power and speed, on rate statistics rather than totals.

How these are computed

wOBA uses linear weights measured from this season's own play-by-play rather than published constants, and wRC+ is park-adjusted against that same league. dbWAR is our own open implementation — not fWAR or bWAR — and the full derivation, including its simplifications, is on the methodology page.